MZ Vista Force (Tweaking Guide)

Not sure if they get something special from Yahoo while people searching. Doubt they get paid but they might get free adverts and so on which is good

 

Possibly...
But sometimes you really wonder... I think Nero has a Google toolbar...

 

Google has adverts in a lot of web sites, they probably offer higher chance for the link to be shown in them. Also i think you have to pay google for the link you put in their "google.com" page, so they might allow them to put X links for free and so on. Im assuming at least Tried checking google in case anyone mentioned something as for why they do it but no luck there.

 

I meant a google toolbar in Nero software.

 

Yea thats what i mean too Nero puts google bar in the software, Nero company gets better deals with Google on their adverts

 

Possibly...

I'm just thinking... you get those - add insults here - in the EU comission who have Microsoft roll out the "n" version of Vista without a Media Player (Buy a crippled OS courtesy of the EU) but Google invades just about everything and they don't care... ah well.

Anyway - isn't this a tweaking thread?

 

Not anymore Think we pretty much covered all the aspects of it

Actually it was a discussion about the software before turning it into a "to tweak or not to tweak" conversation

 

I know exactly what it does as i studied it's tech since years, even in xp days the idea of UAC existed and got developed then. it basically doesn't much by itself, but together with the ntfs user/group permission system, it works perfect. it's a tiny change in the os actually, with a huge security impact. it does make it 100% impossible to manipulate any of the system files from within the os, anytime, without getting a prompt first.

why it pops up where is easily determined if you know how ntfs permissions work (but they're not that easy, no).

and because i've studied so long and know quite a bit about it, i can only say EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE IT ON. no one "knows better". that's like you say to your friend "protect me" in some game, or war, or what ever. he doesn't know 100% when you get attacked. he may miss something. only you know when it hurts. and as such, only the os knows when it's system files get hurt / attacked / changed. and then, it blocks'n'asks (tm).

you can't see if your os gets attacked. it doesn't get attacked trough "open ports". it gets attacked mainly trough security holes in applications that connect to the web themselfes. and that means, trough ie, firefox, opera, every mail program, itunes, winamp, msn, any other chat app, every app that does online updates, etc. which, in the end means, mostly any app you have running is attackable. and most of them, in an invisible way. means you won't NOTICE the attack.

UAC does not at all prevent YOUR data to be save. it's not it's matter. it only cares about the OS. that's where the future development hopefully will be in. build up a barricate for the user data.


so, the general advice, even for knowledgeable it-gods: leave it on. and then, sit back and relax. you've done the right thing, and now you know what's going on on your system 100%. at least, in terms of os and normal programs (steam being an exception. steam games could get harmed without UAC. but that's because games require that as a feature (auto-updates, mods, more maps, etc.. so games have to be "harmed" without uac, a.k.a. updated)).

 

Right, so let's get back on topic here. You and davepermen have argued long enough.

MaXimus, I suggest you put a disclaimer in your first post about how it is NECESSARY, not just recommended, to back up your registry before doing ANY of these tweaks, because several users have had their system CRIPPLED from using this program. You owe it to the people who try this after reading your thread.

 

LoL. Yea... Indeed.
Luckily, I know it carries some risks and avoided it.
Manually, I did something non-risky.
I did do some minor tweak such as bandwidth package for the internet.
In addition, I turned off some useless start-up such as abode thingy and quicktime as well as WLM.
However, the tweaks I did are really small. I guess no problems for me.

As for this GIGANTIC TWEAKS, TRY IT AT YOUR OWN RISK(again).
BACK-UP = 100% needed!

 

ohno, lost my post

in short:

disabling wlm can be done in it's options => no tweak. tweaks are things that can't be done in a default gui (registry counts, about:config counts, file manipulations etc).

BACKUP = 100% NEEDED should be a sticky topic above all forii in here. and every user should have to read the whole thread explaining different working solutions for backup EVERY DAY till he states exactly how he does its backup. only then, he can dismiss that thread. i know all would hate it

that's the short version..

 

You had an interesting conversation here while I wasn't there...

As this thread has been put back straight on-topic by crash, I wonder if I should take my UAC post out of here and create a separate thread for it so that people can talk about it. Also, there have been interesting points in your discussion which I would also like to cover, so I'm thinking about expanding that particular post to include multiple sections, not only UAC.
What do you think?

 

there are enough topics about uac actually. so you can check my posting history. and actually, the post in my sig shows best what i think about it.

 

Yea, the UAC debate has been discussed over and over again. At this point, everybody pretty much has their views set about it and the thread would probably just devolve into one big argument like this one did for a bit.

 

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. What I meant was the exact opposite - to include information about topics other than UAC, so that discussion is not focused about one single thing all the time (which is never good on forums). Like why Vista uses much RAM, that it's not a good idea to run two antivirus programs at the same time, why a firewall can not protect from the inside to the outside and more.

I'd be willing to do a longer information compilation with multiple categories about common misinterpreted information about things like uac (which is already there...), antivirus, services, firewalls and whatever. But! ...only if there are people who are interested.

 

i try to collect such stuff in my sig, but haven't got far yet

 

It all depends on what you are doing with your machine. I record, mix, and master audio primarily, and secondarily I use office, firefox, etc. I also have a media center PC, and a kitchen laptop, making my total 4 machines running pretty much 24 / 7. They all were on XP, until the W7 release. And now all but the old kitchen laptop is very happy with W7. I have been running 4 machines in this same place since I can remember, and for the record I have not had an XP Blue Screen of Death. I think a few years ago I had one when some ram went out in an older laptop. But, that wasn't an OS problem, was it?

There are those who use the machine to accomplish something, and those whose main accomplishment is the actual use of the machine. The majority are still surfing the web and using microsoft office, and if Vista requires them to upgrade their hardware and then takes away the gains of the upgrade by bogging them down with 30 additional processes, and the same machine with XP does the same job, but quicker, and with less "setting up properly". (that's my favorite phrase to hear- that Vista is so much better, it just requires being "set up properly.")

Vista more stable than XP? I don't know where to begin. To my ears it's like hearing that the Jonas Brothers are an important influence in modern rock and roll. I can't be alone. XP was removed from shelves and yet still as of May it dominates worldwide market share still with like 65%. 200,000+ people petitioning for XP to stay, Vista on CNET's worst technology products of all time. Worst of all is all of this in the face of Microsoft throwing everything they could into Vista, trying to promote it and trying to eliminate XP.

So some have indeed delighted in their Vista experience, and to some others, there are some apps which require Vista to run(sometimes just because microsoft refused to have XP support it). In some ways Vista is better. I know there are die hard vista fans here. I tried, really I did.

 

well, my config is mostly the same, and all with vista. and it all works well.

vista is a step up in security and stability. everything else could NOT have happened. it's just normal progression.

i've seen 100% stable win98 systems. doesn't mean win98 per se was stable, or secure. same for xp. it's very stable, rather secure, but far from perfect. vista is a big step upwards, but as drivers had to be rewritten, initial stability was lower, obviously.

but why, exactly, do you post that in here? this is a thread about tweaking vista?

 

I didn't have a single bluescreen with XP either. If it works for you, then there's no need to switch except for if you need Vista for compatibility reasons or are concerned about security.

And Vista is indeed one of the worst products ever, but not from the technical implementation.

Windows 7 is Vista 1.0 - Sadly, I don't even mean that as a joke... Microsoft wasn't able to accomplish everything they wanted for Vista in time. And Windows 7 then got an awful amount of polishing.

 

Agreed, should have been Vista SP3

 

LOL!
Agreed. Windows 7 is polished Windows Vista.
They should not release Windows 7 so fast because Windows Vista just released a while ago.
I afraid that Windows Vista ended up like Windows ME.

 

its dead but not really windows 7 is vista basically just with some additions

 

More things to disable yeyyy :laugh: Starting with Aero shake

 

Gotta love it when people post such untrue stuff.

Yes, it's not as big a code jump as Vista was from XP. No, it's not the same under the hood.

 

But it is the Windows that people thought Vista would be. Microsoft wouldn't have released Vista so early if they wouldn't have had to because it already was under development for so many years. It became much better with the Service Packs.

 

Yeah, but that doesn't mean people should spread misinformation.

 

I have always disabled UAC and have NEVER fallen victim to any kind of malware. I cannot stand those annoying messages.

 

welcome to the club bro!

 

I am in as well. XD
What is the club name?? UAC sounds useless to me(i know it is important).
As long as AV is working and we do not do anything stupid. UAC is only an annoying message.
Windows 7 refine it somehow. I hope Windows 7 UAC is not as annoying as Windows Vista's.

 

call it club of morrons? club of we-know-better-till-we-die?



the trick is to not need to "know that we don't do anything stupid". i like the ease-of-living of not needing to care myself. and one day, you'll see the light.. except for maximus, who doens't really see any light, switching around all day long to find it. currently on win7 as i see



edit: btw, while i'm not joking, it's still ment jokingly. to each it's own. but please stop spreading the "coolness" of disabling uac. i've seen quite some who disabled it who know NOTHING about computers, essentially nothign about vista, because some "guru told them" or "they've read it on the interweb". the result: spyware/malware/virusridden systems. yep, even with antivirus software. even while it's good for you, don't "spread the word" and don't make it hip, please. i don't use antivirus as i have no use and need for it (partially thanks to UAC). but i do it as a proof of concept, as an experiment, and force everyone around me to not follow into my footsteps. it's my own personal risk, and my own personal choise, and gets stated as that.

 

That seemed unnecessary.

 

and i stated it was just joking. but there is some truth in it. they believe they know better. and as we all know, often this means they don't. that's just .. normal? (same for me btw..).

and it is somehow morronic to disable the biggest new security enhancement of vista "just because it's annoying". which it isn't if you know how to handle it.. but that's a topic for tons of stupid wars. i'm happy i got all the people i support to have it enabled or have it back enabled. and i teached them what it's about, what it does, and why it does it. as well as i gave support in the (small amount of) cases where uac really created some trouble (see my sign).

 

Not to argue with nonsense such as moron thingy and blah blah.
I want some REAL and RELIABLE answers. XD!
UAC, how does it block viruses and spywares/malwares?(I know it can block you said it long time ago but is 100%? even an AV doesn't!)
Let's say if UAC blocks them like AV did.
Norton, Kaspersky, Mcfee, Panda, Avast and so on might die in no time.

As I told before, maybe you forget, you can check in this thread.
I didn't say UAC useless and turn it off for the sake of coolness.
Now, I know you wanted to help and tell the world UAC was great. I greatly appreciate(I would learn it if free now college study busy). But don't look down on other people easily.
We! Are! Not! So! Idiot! Or Brainless! To LET ALL THE VIRUSES PAWN US!
We know which websites should not go and we have installed plenty of security softwares. My beloved combo, Avira AntiVir Personal 9 + Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware + Online Armor Free + SUPERAntiSpyware + SpywareBlaster!

 

First of all, there's no 100% security.

The difference between UAC and anti-virus is that anti-virus solutions are reactive, whereas UAC is proactive. It can not give you 100% security, and no way should you not use an additional anti-virus solution (unless you're 100% certain about that), but it can greatly help to prevent compromisation of your computer systems if you know how it's working and when to click "cancel".
Overall, the amount of increase in security you can get from using UAC is easily bigger than the amount of annoyance you get by UAC dialogs.

Please read http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4910504#post4910504 as it doesn't make sense that I rewrite a detailed explanation.

 

I know that very much(I do not say AV = 100% secure). Still, I prefered UAC-OFF currently.
It is only user preferences.
Anyway, with UAC turned off, how dangerous is our PC would be?
You just need to answer "Issit a reformat of windows can solve the problems" or "permanent damaged can't be heal".
thanks.

 

Besides Disabling UAC, i also have set my account to admin. I know that it would be much more secure if i ran as a standard user, but once again, I have never been hit with any sort of malware, so I don't care.

 

Unfortunately, I can not give you an answer that simple with a clear conscience.

Most times, a reformat will do the trick. However, it is possible that permanent damage (or a permanent infection) is caused by malicious software that can not be undone by a simple reinstallation of your operating system. This is completely independent of UAC - as there is not total security, both can happen whether UAC is enabled or disabled. What's important is that with UAC enabled, the risk of both is greatly reduced compared to using an anti-virus solution alone if you know how to use UAC (read: when to click "Cancel", essentially). What's even worse than permanent damage, though, is the risk of theft of money (like online banking data) or private (maybe even confidential) data. Most malicious software nowadays doesn't try to do "jokes" like opening the disc drive repeatedly or rendering your computer unusable, may it be either permanently or temporarily so it can be fixed by a simple operating system reinstallation.

The world of malicious software is professionalizing:

For the full post, see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4921903#post4921903​

For more on this, read: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4917543#post4917543

 

Yes, it will block those viruses, and do so much more reliably than any of your beloved anti-this or anti-that software could ever do. The reason for this is exactly what the other poster said: Anti-virus software is reactive, and can only block stuff it already knows, meaning it is very, very close to useless. What do you think any self-respecting hacker will do before he relases a new virus? Why, he will test it with all of the major anti-virus products, to make sure they will not detect it. Don't even get me started on the utility of those third-party firewalls and assorted anti-malware garbage...

Bottom line is this: If you run a Vista system in a secure (meaning, default) setup, including having UAC enabled, and never, ever running under an administrative account unless you have to (for program installation and system maintenance), then your system will be as secure as can be.

Here, I'll tell you a little secret: I have been running all of my computers, since Win2K, without any anti-virus or any other anti-this-or-that stuff, and have never, in almost ten years over at least a dozen machines, including our family PC (which is on 24x7), had a single virus or malware problem. As for tweaking, take this: I'll bet you, without any buggy anti-virus software dragging them down and destabilizing them, my machines are probably faster than your "tweaked" boxes any day of the week.

Well, look at the grand tweaker, running a whole army of useless, memory- and CPU-hogging "security utilities"! No further comment...

Except for this: I have issued this challenge before, and I'd be happy to do it again: Tell me any place on the web, any website, wherevere you like, and I'll go there and see if I am able to catch a virus. Like I said, I have tried this before, but I never managed to get any piece of malware on my machine. Even on some of those cell-phone hacking websites... I have seen them try some interesting tricks, but in the end, their silly stuff usually just crashes and burns in front of Vista's built-in security measures.

Interesting remark, by the way. Yes, you might think so, would you not? But, see, there is money to be made here, lots and lots of money. Billions of dollars of it, in fact. By the people selling the software, by PC magazines publishing useless advice, by PC "repair shops", and on and on. Telling people that they really don't need any of that crap doesn't earn anybody a dime, so guess what happens? Meanwhile, Apple afficionados get to gloat about "insecure" Windows, when in reality, there is next to no difference in the security of Windows machines compared to Mac OSX machines. If anything, Vista is in fact more secure than OS X. But I digress, so I'll stop here. Long enough post as it is already...

 

MBAM and SAS is not resources hog since they are only on-demand scanners.
Avira Antivir Personal 9 is very light resources AV(a lot of people agreed).
SpywareBlaster = WELL KNOWN ZERO RESOURCES.
Online Free Armor = Well, I don't actually use it/install it since I used Windows Firewall.
How can you said this combo was a resources hog before you investigate them.

I usually come to this forum, and many other official website such as,
www.deviantart.com
www.onemanga.com(contain virus)
www.youtube.com
www.wikipedia.com

For your info, my laptop have ZERO problems with UAC disable for 1 years.
Once got in trouble(always due to over tweaking of vista LOL), I would just reformat.

 

Avira free + Windows Defender should do the job for you.

 

Yep! I got my Windows Defender up-to-date as well.
Thanks coolguy. +Rep

Avira is good and low resources! I wonder somebody said it is resources hog.
Moreover, spywareblaster is ZERO resources and he still said it is resources hog.
OMG!

 

well, using no resources is less than low resources. so it is, sort of, a resource hog, at least in comparison to UAC.

UAC uses no resources and can block any future attack that is unknown and no vire-scanner has anything to do against it.

it does only block attacks against the system, and not against your user data. and thats why you should have an active scanner for your user data. for the system, no. as long as you don't click "yes" to any unknown uac prompt that pops up without your knowledge.

UAC is easy, but viresoftware is more "cool" as it's "your own thing", you do it "your way", and you know better at it.

but real masters learn how UAC works, and how to get it under control when it missbehaves (see my sig for one example). once you learned to master UAC, all the other "security tools" get ridiculously unneeded. a pro-active scanner suddenly only has to run on user\downloads and user\documents\received files, if at all (not in my case). and maybe in the torrent-download-folder, yes..

 

I totally agreed with you.
But I am not the MASTER.
So, I would do on my own style. If 1 day, I become the MASTER of UAC as you said. Then, I surely no need any antiviruses.

 

You should have read the link I provided.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4917543#post4917543

The term you were searching for was "Cracker". "Hacker" refers to the good ones, while "Cracker" means the evil guys, basically.

I completely disagree. The default setup of Vista is way less secure than it can be, because otherwise there would be too many restrictions. When run in a default setup, it is nowhere near as secure as it can be. This is true for most operating systems.

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It is impossible to say this for sure! Because...

For the full post (and to see the latest version of the quote), see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4917543#post4917543
​

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Why do you say it's "buggy"? Sure, no software that has a certain degree of complexity is free of bugs, but it's not true that each and every anti-virus software is full of bugs.

Well, a crash is a definite evidence for memory corruption, which may be used for execution of arbitrary code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_corruption

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again:

For the full post (and to see the latest version of the quote), see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4921903#post4921903​

Anti-virus solutions do not compete with UAC, therefore they're not really in danger (at least not regarding UAC). They're an additional security improvement, as from a security standpoint using UAC and an anti-virus solution together is always better than using any one of them alone (while the concept behind UAC is still more powerful than the concept behind signature-based scanning).

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While Microsoft indeed seems to somewhere have much more knowledge on how to create secure products (making use of that is another story, though...), Mac OS X should still be more secure because it's being used by much less people.

 

sorry to burst the bubble (a bit), christoff, but UAC is secure. vista is secured trough UAC. you, as a user, aren't.

and there's the difference people don't get. UAC is about protecting the system from getting harmed by anyone (and that's why it asks the hopefully legit user to agree to any harm you're possibly doing).

UAC is NOT about protecting user-data. your profile can get completely hosed by britney.jpg.exe. but not the system itself. so no other user gets affected on the system (except he gave you write access to its folders), nor the system. but YOU WILL.

that's why i said a virescanner at the bare minimum, a.k.a. all downloadfolders should get active protection.

but vista is, thanks to UAC, as close to 100% secure from any arbitary attack as it can be.

 

dream on

Win7 pwns V!$+4

 

dream on maximus, you change your os like i do my pants.. urgh at least close.

win7 is vista, and in terms of security, it's the same. the only change about UAC is, now it allows systemwide changes without prompt. which i dislike. because it means on a family pc, i can mess around with settings affecting the rest of the family. which is not really that .. family friendly?


edit: in other words, for outside attackers, win7 and vista are IDENTICAL about UAC.

except that, if you can get somehow a file signed to be from microsoft, you can attack for free. that's the one new attack vector: getting win7 to believe something is signed by microsoft, or some other "trusted source".

 

I wonder what you could mean by "ZERO resources". That's not possible, unless the program does magic. It'll still take harddrive space. Maybe only a little, but that's more than nothing. Too much, in my opinion, for a program that has no real benefit, FOR ME. Obviously, I can't tell you what programs you should play with on your PC, mind you.

 

and if it takes zero resources, how can it active prevent attacks?

 

My words.

My words.


We agree so far.

True. However, they way you wrote it it can be easily misunderstood.

It's true only if britney.jpg.exe doesn't ask for elevated privileges. If it does (causing a UAC prompt to appear) once the user executes britney.jpg.exe and accepts the UAC prompt (because he doesn't know what it's there for), britney.jpg.exe will be able to compromise the system.

Don't agree. You could, for example, make heavy use of virtualization or create software policies to prevent all software except for whitelisted one from running. This would further increase security, which leads to the logical conclusion that your statement can't be true.